Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/524

THE AMERICAN that case I should n't have much to say to her. But such a matter as this gives me plenty!"

"You had better, at this rate, keep what you have there, my son," the old woman quavered with a strained irony.

"By all means," Newman said—"keep it and show it to your mother when you get home."

"And after enlisting the Duchess?" asked the Marquis, who folded the paper and put it away.

"Well, there are all the other people you had the cruelty to introduce me to in a character of which you were capable, at the next turn, of rudely divesting me. Many of them immediately afterwards left cards on me, so that I have their names correctly and shall know how to find them."

For a moment, on this, neither of Newman's friends spoke; the Marquise sat looking down very hard, while her son's blanched pupils were fixed on her face. "Is that all you have to say?" she finally asked.

"No, I want to say a few words more. I want to say that I hope you quite understand what I'm about. This is my vindication, you know, of my claim that I've been cruelly wronged. You've treated me before the world, convened for the express purpose, as if I were not good enough for you. I mean to show the world that, however bad I may be, you're not quite the people to say it."

Madame de Bellegarde was silent again, and then, with a return of her power to face him, she dealt with his point. Her coolness continued to affect him as consummate; he wondered of what alarms, what 494